Renihan, Samuel D. God Without Passions: The Majesty of God’s Unshakeable Perfection. (Cornwall, UK: Broken Wharfe, 2024). 86 pages.
The question of God’s passions frequently incites rather passionate discourse. While discussing this topic in a classroom, a student once protested through tears that God’s compassion and mercy toward his people is such that he feels our pain. This student simply could not fathom a deity impervious to our pain, unable to be moved from one emotional state to another alongside his creatures.
In God Without Passions: The Majesty of God’s Unshakeable Perfections, Samuel Renihan argues that, in fact, God does not feel my pain. Rather, as the infinitely perfect, most pure Spirit, the incomprehensible God revealed in holy Scripture is “invisible, without body, parts, or passions” (2LCF 2.1). Contrary to the instincts of many modern Christians, this does not mean God is not merciful toward his creatures. But it does mean that God is not merciful in the same way that we are merciful. Our mercy is passionate. God is merciful without passions.
The subject of this book is the doctrine of divine impassibility. Until the modern period, this doctrine went largely unquestioned by every confessional Christian tradition since the very earliest days of Christian theological reflection. In recent centuries, however, divine impassibility (with a host of concomitant doctrines) has fallen on hard times in popular Christian understanding. Impassibility is a difficult doctrine, as the issues involved are manifold and can be conceptually dense. Renihan, however, has managed to articulate a faithful and clear account in terms accessible to any thoughtful lay person in well under 100 pages.
In the opening chapter, Renihan explores the foundation of divine impassibility, the teaching of Scripture: “The most important question about divine impassibility is whether or not it is the teaching of the Bible” (3). It is the teaching of the Bible, however, that presents one of the first challenges to the doctrine in the minds of most Christians. The Bible frequently speaks about God in the language of human experience and emotion—passions (see Gen. 6:6-7, 2 Kgs. 22:17, and Eze. 33:11). If the Bible speaks thus, why should I believe that he is not, in fact, a passionate God? In reply, Renihan observes that other passages in Scripture explicitly deny that God experiences such passions (see Num 23:19, Mal. 3:6, and James 1:17). Still other passages tell us that God is altogether different than all created things because he is the Creator of all things out of nothing (Gen. 1:1, Isa. 46:9). As such, his being is pure being. He possesses the fullness of his life all at once (see Exo. 3:14). What are we to do with these different types of passages?
As Christians committed to the inerrancy of Scripture, we know these types of texts are not contradicting one another. In order to reconcile them, Renihan puts several guiding principles to work to show that the accommodated language of Scripture can speak of God properly or in figures of speech. Texts that speak about God as passionate are of the figurative kind, speaking about him after the manner of creatures to make a point about him by the figure of speech. The other kinds of passages are spoken properly of God and regulate our understanding of the figurative statements.
In the middle section of the book, Renihan explores the Bible’s teaching on the limitations of humans as creatures in contrast to the LORD, who is the Creator of all (Chapter 2). It is vital that Christians understand these limitations and the fact that they are proper to creatures as creatures. This lays the groundwork for a lesson on how Scripture does—and how Christians should—apply limited human language to God: eminence and negation (Chapter 3). Whenever we speak a true word about God, such as “God is love,” we must immediately recognize that there are certain imperfections in the way creatures love that are not true about God. Because God has told us, “There is none like me” (Isa. 46:9), it would be folly to assume that God’s love is just like our love. Thus, we negate imperfections when we speak about God. This is the way of negation. On the other hand, God’s love is infinitely greater than the love of creatures. Thus, whatever perfection is present in creaturely love, Christians must recognize that the perfection is infinite in God. This is the way of eminence.
Having walked readers through a method of interpreting biblical statements in the first three chapters, Renihan turns his attention to the incarnation of God the Son in Chapter 4. Here, all of the insights of earlier chapters are put to work in consideration of the glorious person of our Lord Jesus Christ. In Christ, Renihan reminds readers, the passibility of human creatures and the impassibility of the everlasting God are united. The incarnate Son of God is one person in two natures. Renihan skillfully walks readers through the biblical passages that teach this truth and the theological entailments of that biblical teaching. His burden is to demonstrate that the Son of God is truly human. This does not, however, contradict or somehow modify the impassibility of God. The two natures of the Son, united in one person, remain distinct. The Son is impassible according to the divine nature and passible according to the human nature he assumed. Renihan reminds readers that the doctrine of divine impassibility “not only causes God’s essential perfections to shine forth, but also, as we recognize the distinction of natures in the one person Jesus Christ, it should cause us to praise our Redeemer” (59).
In the final chapter, Renihan turns his attention to the profoundly encouraging application of this doctrine. Far from presenting God as inert, or somehow deficient in the perfections that we experience as passions, the doctrine of divine impassibility presents God as infinite in all his perfections precisely because they are not passions to him. He is perfectly and unchangeably himself in all his perfections and in all his relations to creatures. This doctrine, then, forms the ground of all our deepest comforts as Christians. As the impassible God, he cannot be moved with respect to his promises but will keep them all, no matter how much you and I may change. As the impassible God, he will keep in Christ all of those he has elected in Christ, carrying them safely through the changes of their own creaturely lives all the way to glory. If you are justified by faith in Christ, you will not be swept away from Christ by changes in your feelings or commitments or emotions. Why? Because God cannot be moved with respect to his eternal decree to redeem his people through his Son.
This is a small book on a big doctrine. In it, Renihan has given Christians good reason to rejoice in the impassibility of the one true and living God. He does not, in fact, feel my pain, and this is supremely good news.